Poor Cady.

I used to knit her fun little things. Things like socks, skirties, pinafores, and bohemes, and boleros, and sweaters and….you get the point.  Christmas morning was the epitome of bad parenting.  One by one, the kids opened up their gifts, including a special hand knit gift from yours truly – a sweater for each child.  Each child, that is, except Cady.

“Where’s MY sweater mommy?”

ohhhhh crap, you noticed! “Mommy’s going to knit you one.”

Weeks passed and still no sweater.  I was having a hard time finding a pattern to go with the yarn she picked out.  A few more weeks passed and Cady decided she wanted a Tiny Tea Leaves and then commandeered the pomegranate color yarn I had bought to knit myself a hat.  By the time I got ready to cast on, it was mid March….

Obviously, the time  to knit a wool sweater had passed.

“Mommy, where’s my sweater?”

Really child?  Is your memory really that good? ”How about a shirt?”

With that I found the perfect pink wool cotton blend yarn in my stash, Alana Dakos’ Spring Garden Tee pattern, needles, and cast on.  The pattern was very straight forward and easy to read and the construction was interesting and never boring.  I am totally in love with the lace sleeves and the way they poof.

See how delicate they are?  Like they would just flit and flutter away if you would let them!  I am definitely going to be looking for some bamboo to knit an Adult Spring Garden Tee for myself this weekend (YAY MDSW WOOT!!!!)  Maybe in a soft sky blue.  Although I’ve never knit with straight up bamboo before so I’m not sure how it would hold up to baby spit up and whatnot…anyways…

I’ve finished knitting the top and it is currently blocking next to me in all its girly glory.  I’d say it was finished, but I have plans for an extra special butterfly embroidery on the bottom corner once it is dry.

Chatongris’ Cady’s Garden Tee

I cannot wait to start little one for Nora!

I have a bad case of WIP-itis.

WIP-itis?  What in the world are you talking about?

WIP-itis, much like tonsillitis and bronchitis, is a bad inflammation in which your works in progress multiplies and swells until your ravelry page becomes entrenched with WIPs and hibernating projects.  This infection often occurs comorbidly with Knitting ADD and can also occur during the early stages of mojo-plegia.

While researchers cannot pinpoint 1 exact cause, many risk factors have been discovered to date:

1. Motherhood – The addition of 1 or more children often increases the desire of the mother to knit as many baby items as she can while the baby is still small enough to wear them.  As the baby(ies) age and become sentient, mothers often have to deal with multiple requests for specific items to be knit, crocheted, or crafted.  An increase in the severity of WIP-itis is directly correlated to the increase in children.
2. Stressful jobs (overtime) – Many with stressful jobs seek to create as a way to relax.  While this works for some people, the lack of sufficient hours in the day often leads the worker with unending projects that must be put on hold until the right season comes around again.
3. Rapidly growing queues - common among the Ravelry community, many creators become entranced with the numerous projects and patterns available thanks to the internet.  These creators find themselves casting on every new and exciting pattern that catches their eyes.
4. Expanding stashes – Often fearful of their significant others’ shock and disapproval over their ever growing bins, closets, and rooms of yarn, many creators rush to knit up as much as the yarn as possible before the unsuspecting significant other discovers just exactly HOW BIG the stash has become.

For now, there is only one treatment that has been proven to work.  While intense and extremely difficult for the creator infected with WIP-itis, the creator must focus on only 1 or 2 projects at a time and follow through with the projects until completion.  While long and arduous, this treatment seems to keep WIP-itis at bay.